Upstate NY visit: Homeschooling!

For years I’ve been wishing to visit family friends who home school and learn more about their thoroughly intentioned choices. I timed it perfectly with the riotous fall colors, where my mother and I spent days experimenting with new ways to process the bumper crop of apples from her modest orchard (I made apple cider in a food processor! Just puree and strain through cheesecloth! Delicious!). In between canning apple sauce & jam, I visited two nearby families and was very inspired by what I saw. Enjoy!

Home School 1: Organic Farm Life                       

Early afternoon, I pulled into the farmyard after waiting for a few beautifully plumed guinea hens to stalk out of my way. Two little tow-headed boys raced around on bikes, out-doing each other with tricks. (I later saw their father grab the smallest bike and ride it in a quick circle, to the delight of the boys—“Do a wheelie, dad!”— instead, he hopped off the tiny thing, laughing).

The mother/teacher, who I’ll call K., graciously invited me to visit their farm and her “classroom”. A successful and eager student through an advanced degree, she opted to home school not out of a negative experience with schools, but rather as both a practical choice to enable more time with her children, as well as a desire to surround them with as much loving care as possible. As successful entrepreneurs and farmers, she and her husband are at their busiest during the summer when schools are out, and have the most free time during the winter, when the children would otherwise be in classes.

The school day starts at 8am around a table in the family’s cozy living room. At noon, the four children are free to explore on their own. On the afternoon I was visiting, the oldest girl, a 5^th grader, was snuggled on the couch deeply engrossed in her book, the two boys were practicing tricks on bikes, and the littlest girl wanted desperately to tag along with us, but K. convinced her to go spend time with the horses.

In this 4-hour block of daily lessons, the children follow a Waldorf-inspired home school curriculum called Live Ed. The curriculum maps out lessons for each child, as well as a chunk of math & spelling words for the week for the older children. Each child has a blackboard to keep track of their work, chores, etc, as well as various notebooks to organize their different lessons. On Wednesdays, the three youngest head out with a group of 14 other homeschoolers with an outdoor adventure group, exploring the county by rock-climbing, canoeing, and other escapades. During this time, K. has the time to focus more closely on studies with her eldest.

We spoke a bit about the vast range of the structures possible in homeschooling. Some families have very structured lessons but complete time flexibility: children are free to complete their workbooks, online lessons, etc. at their leisure. Others have structured times for home school lessons, but the lessons themselves are completely open-ended, following the curiosity of the child. K.’s approach is fairly structured both in terms of time and content, in that children have a four hour daily block for lessons, and she follows a curriculum. That said, she clearly has tremendous flexibility to tailor lessons to each child’s needs.

We were on the same page about easing back on the push for aged-based milestones. K.’s one big regret was giving into the pressure of reading too early with her oldest child. After a family member trained as a reading specialist offered to work one on one with the oldest girl when she was 5, K. gave in (generally with a Waldorf approach, children begin reading much later, around 2^nd grade). The result was four years of “I can’t do it, I’m not a reader,” and it was incredibly painful. Happily, the child is now reading avidly (she’s the one I saw tucked away with a book), yet this lesson has stuck: pressuring a child too strongly and too early can result in insecurity and pressure that are antithetical to learning. 

I learned that in New York State, homeschoolers are required to take the same standardized tests as their public school peers, beginning in 4^th grade. The 5^th grader took the exams last year for the first time and came in on all subjects at an 8^th-11^th grade level. With one exception: she (the daughter) was horrified to find that she was spelling at a 2^nd grade level. It did encourage her to redouble efforts on spelling, a subject that doesn’t come easily to her, and as she did exceedingly well on everything else, it wasn’t a crushing blow.  

Some friends of K.’s in the homeschooling community are intentionally not teaching their children to type or use computers because they don’t want their child to be stuck at a desk job later in life. However, K. wants to keep all options open. While the children currently use no media whatsoever (except for a little football around Superbowl season), K. wants them to be ready for college-level work by age 18, which will involve some computer literacy and typing skills later on.

Like myself, K. has many questions as answers about the “best” way to educate. She is scrupulously thoughtful about the choices she makes as a teacher/mother. It’s plain to see that there’s a lot of joyful and authentic learning and time spent in the family and on the farm, and she has gives herself completely as a teacher & support to her children. It’s inspiring.